Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday October 03, 2011 @09:56PM
from the merging-the-flight-sims-and-directions dept.

Zothecula writes "Those not content with getting a 2D top-down or 360-degree street level view of a planned route using Google Maps can now enjoy a virtual flight over the route thanks to Google adding a new Helicopter View. The new feature, which currently only works in a full browser and requires the Google Earth plugin, lets users see 3D view, and should come in particularly handy for walkers or bike riders looking for a more intuitive view of potentially tiring hills."

Not that I've tried this "new" helicopter view, but Google Earth had that kind of navigation track animation since the Keyhole days. I think the only news is that they've tied that feature into maps.google.com using a plugin.

Agreed. I used this very thing in keyhole to demo the agenda we had for a gathering a long time ago. It was cool to allow people to see what parts of the city we were going to. Flying up and around allowed them to see that.

This view is actually a lot better than the old path-following, which wasn't sufficiently damped for routes involving a lot of right-angle turns (the camera would swing nauseatingly) that you tend to get with road directions. It's a tool for a specific purpose (an overview fly-by of your route). Regardless, it's not a flight sim.

WebGL (OpenGL ES) is perfectly capable of this and requires no plug-in.

P.S.: Yes, XHTML. Because I assume they’re professionals that require proper XML error checking of their code. Plain HTML5 is for those who think they are "pro" because they read a book about HTML in the.com bubble era.

Maybe because the Earth plugin existed before HTML5 implementations? Maybe because IE doesn't support WebGL? Maybe because *most other browsers* don't enable WebGL by default? Maybe because WebGL support is experimental?

3D is hard to do on Linux... I should know, I'm a cross platform game programmer.

I mean, it's not like you freetards have created a standard Open Graphics Library, and even if you did it's not like Firefox or Google would be using such a thing, especially not on OSX -- I mean, we know how they all hate open standards and free software. Google's sKetchup 3D editor doesn't run on Loonix or support.OBJ or.3DS either... wait, it does if you pay for it... Oh, and OpenGL does exist... and they're using it on

OpenGL works, it works great, it works wonderfully! (I hobby program games, not that I'm any good at it)

But, there are problems with OpenGL in the linux world, if it works then it's great. If you driver works that is. If I try 3D on this machine then I get random X.Org crashes and artifacts. It's just some simple intel videocard with minimal 3D options, but I don't think windows is plagued by the same problems.

Google Earth is really a standalone Windows application. [google.com] (Remember those?) Google didn't develop it; it was from a company called Keyhole, which sold it as a service for years before Google bought them out. I had a Keyhole account back in 2003. NVidia had a promotional deal; it was cheaper with an NVidia card.

You could fly along a route in Keyhole, so a "helicopter view" isn't exactly new.